[13] The story is taken from the Saga of Eric the Red, and from the Flatey Book in Mr. Reeves's _Finding of Wineland the Good_ (Clarendon Press, 1890). The discovery of Vineland was made about the year 1000. The saga of Eric the Red was written about 1300-1334, but two hundred years before, about 1134, Ari the learned mentions Vineland as quite familiar in his _Islandingabok_. There are other traces of Vineland, earlier than the manuscript of the Saga of Eric the Red. Of course we do not know when that saga was first written down. The oldest extant manuscript of it belonged to one Hauk, who died in 1334. _THE ESCAPES OF CERVANTES_ MOST people know of the terrible war, waged even down to the present century, between the Christian ships cruising about the Mediterranean and the dreaded Moors or Corsairs of the Barbary Coast. It was a war that began in the name of religion, the Crescent against the Cross; but, as far as we can learn from the records of both sides, there was little to choose in the way that either party treated the captives. A large number of these were chained to the oars of the galleys which were the ships of battle of the middle ages, and sometimes the oars were so long and heavy that they needed forty men to each. The rowers had food enough to give them the strength necessary for their work, and that was all, and the knowledge that they were exerting themselves for the downfall of their fellow-Christians, often of their fellow-countrymen, must have made their labour a toil indeed. Often it happened that a man's courage gave way and he denied his faith and his country, and rose to great honours in the service of the Sultan, the chief of the little kings who swarmed on the African coasts. The records of the Corsairs bristle with examples of these successful renegades, many of them captured as boys, who were careless under what flag they served, as long as their lives were lives of adventure. All the captives were not, however, turned into galley slaves. Some were taken to the towns and kept in prisons called _bagnios_, waiting till their friends sent money to redeem them. If this was delayed, they were set to public works, and treated with great severity, so that their letters imploring deliverance might become yet more urgent. The others, known as the king's captives, whose ransom might be promptly expected, did no work and were kept apart from the rest.